Nearly all of the 70 people charged in a massive $250 million fraud case targeting federal child nutrition programs in Minnesota are Somali immigrants, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Between March 2020 and January 2022, they allegedly stole funds meant for feeding children, funneled through a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future. So far, 37 have pleaded guilty, and 7 have been convicted; the rest await trial.
The scam involved fake meal counts, rosters, and invoices submitted to the Minnesota Department of Education. “Feeding Our Future” acted as a sponsor for daycares and other sites, making it easy to file false claims during the COVID-era program expansion.
Minnesota, home to about 100,000 Somali immigrants—mostly in the Twin Cities—has long attracted refugees with “some of America’s most generous welfare and charity programs,” according to journalist Kelly Riddell. She also quoted professor Ahamed Samatar, who said, “Minnesota is exceptional in so many ways but it’s the closest thing in the United States to a true social democratic state.”
The FBI’s Minneapolis office has also dealt with terror-related concerns in the community, which has seen recruitment by ISIS and al-Shabab.
Between 2020 and 2022, Aimee Bock and a group of mostly Somali immigrants stole $250 million in federal nutrition funds through a scheme centered on the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. The group submitted fake meal counts and rosters to the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), which had loosened oversight under COVID “waivers.” In 2021 alone, Feeding Our Future funneled nearly $200 million to sham sites and vendors.
The Washington Free Beacon says that despite red flags, MDE backed off after accusations of racism. But in April 2021, a whistleblower tipped off the FBI. Surveillance footage later revealed empty food sites that supposedly fed thousands daily. The scheme collapsed in January 2022 when federal agents conducted Minnesota’s largest-ever fraud raid.
Bock, Feeding Our Future’s founder, certified inflated claims from over 250 sites. Though she pocketed $1.9 million, many of her co-conspirators spent millions on luxury items and properties across the U.S., Turkey, and Kenya. “The fraud in this case is gross, disgusting, and despicable,” the report states.
Bock’s fake nonprofit included a board of unaware bartenders and a small-engine mechanic. “Yeah, big shoes,” one deadpanned in court when shown his name atop an organizational chart. The fraud ran so deep that 21 sites on a 1.8-mile stretch of Minneapolis’s Lake Street claimed to serve as many children as the city’s public schools.
Bock and accomplice Salim Said—whose restaurant, Safari, jumped from $600,000 annual revenue to “serving” 5,000 kids daily—were convicted on all 28 counts in just five hours. Said alone claimed over 3.9 million meals and took in $5.5 million.
Though most Somali defendants eagerly joined in, one voice stood out: Abdihakim Osman Nur, who once exposed Rep. Ilhan Omar’s fraudulent marriage, condemned the lavish corruption on Facebook. He posted a video describing gold trays gifted at a Feeding Our Future staffer’s wedding: “We cannot close our eyes to such corruption... when we only have a few bad apples.”
Yet state officials stayed silent. Gov. Tim Walz later claimed, “we caught it very early,” but ignored follow-up questions. Attorney General Keith Ellison, who once said, “I know a scam when I see one,” also declined to comment.
At the post-trial press conference, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson rightly called the case “the shame of Minnesota.” The prosecutors who brought it down, he added, are “the pride of Minnesota.
